What’s Changed When It Comes to Audit & Risk?

By:
Naomi Snyder

June 12th, 2017

It’s not surprising that in the wake of the financial crisis, risk has become a much more important topic on bank boards. What’s more surprising is that it is still front and center, even as credit and economic conditions have remarkably improved.

As Bank Director hosts its Bank Audit & Risk Committees Conference in Chicago this week, risk still is top of mind for attendees and speakers. There are a few notable changes, though, during the past few years.

Five or six years ago, much of the talk for community bank boards was about starting an enterprise risk management system. Regulators were talking about it. Bank officers were talking about it. Boards were trying to figure out how to manage the bank’s various risks in a more integrated, comprehensive manner.

Now, enterprise risk management has plateaued at many banks, says Tim Kosiek, a certified public accountant and partner at Baker Tilly, an accounting and advisory firm. Fewer people are talking about it, or starting new programs. Many banks have already established ERM programs, especially those above $1 billion in assets.

“Bankers are not finding this showing up in the regulatory exams to the degree it was five or six years ago,” says Kosiek, mostly because credit conditions have improved.

ERM still has no set framework. There are no set guidelines from regulators that will tell you exactly how to set one up, or what the perfect ERM program looks like.

But as part of it, compared to four or five years ago, many more banks do have a risk appetite statement, and boards are discussing their risk tolerances for various types of risk, such as credit and compliance.

Challenges still remain. For example, it’s still tough for banks to ensure that their various divisions are sticking to the risk tolerances that have been established, Kosiek says. Also, not all banks have a comprehensive enterprise risk management program in place. The people in charge of risk in the organization don’t necessarily have their compensation clearly tied to their performance as risk officers, for example.

Still, despite those challenges, there are some areas where banks have made significant progress as a whole. In general, bank boards are much more likely to discuss cybersecurity risk. They want to learn about it, they want regular updates from bank management and they want to ensure their organizations have good defenses.

In Bank Director’s 2014 Risk Practices Survey, 51 percent of bank directors said cybersecurity was a top concern. In 2017, 85 percent did.

It’s no secret why they are worried. The reality that pretty much every bank is vulnerable has set in. Twenty-six percent of respondents to Bank Director’s 2017 Risk Practices Survey said their bank has experienced a data breach in the last two years.

It’s not just the risk but the difficulty getting a handle on the risk that is so vexing. Cyberattacks, with their constantly changing bad actors and tactics, are difficult to prepare for.

“[Bankers] have spent so much time on credit risk, which they can have an influence on,’’ Kosiek says. “In the cyber side, they just don’t have all the information.”

The topic is so high up on the board’s agenda, Bank Director digital magazine devoted an entire issue to cybersecurity.

While bank boards fretted over cybersecurity concerns during the last few years, they also had to get ready for one of the biggest accounting changes in decades, CECL, which stands for current expected credit loss standard. Basically, banks must start estimating losses for loans and other assets as soon as they acquire them for the life of the asset. CECL goes into effect for public banks’ fiscal years after Dec. 15, 2019 and for nonpublic banks a year later. Audit committees are overseeing the process.

All these changes are one reason the job of serving on an audit or risk committee is certainly one of the toughest on a bank board. Even as banks have watched their profitability and credit metrics improve in the last few years, the focus on risk coming out the financial crisis has not gone away. It has only shifted.

Naomi Snyder is a writer and contributor to Bank Director publications. She is the former editor of Bank Director.